Tabiry Sah-Setekh
Nebet Per
Tabiry Sah-Setekh was born to the ruling line of one of the great desert clans, a people who had roamed the western sands long before Kemet’s borders were drawn. Her ancestors had once been warriors, raiders, and nomads, their loyalty earned not through oaths of fealty but through blood and survival. Though the great cities of Kemet had risen to power, the desert still belonged to those who knew its secrets, and the clans held sway over the trade routes that wound through the endless dunes.
Her marriage to Pharoah Akl-Abanoub III Suten-Amen was a rare thing—not a conquest, nor a calculated political match, but a strategic effort to ensure lasting peace. For generations, Kemet’s rulers had sought to subdue the desert clans, but their efforts had always failed. Rather than endless conflict, an alliance was proposed, one that would bind the Sah-Setekh to the throne itself. Tabiry was sent as both a bride and a symbol, a living treaty between the shifting sands and the great river.
She arrived at court with a presence as fierce as the winds of the deep desert. Though she adapted to the expectations of palace life, she never sought to erase her origins. She wore the fine jewels and embroidered silks of the nobility, but beneath them, she remained a daughter of the dunes, her movements quick and deliberate, her instincts sharpened by a life where hesitation could mean death.
Unlike some of the other royal wives, she made no pretense of political ambition. She did not concern herself with courtly games or whispered intrigues. Instead, she maintained strong ties with her kin, ensuring that the desert routes remained open, that the trade of salt, incense, and rare stones flowed freely, and that her people did not forget that one of their own sat among the gilded halls of Kemet.
Though the city-born nobility regarded her with wary fascination, none could deny that she was a woman of unshakable will, a queen of two worlds who neither bowed nor yielded, but simply endured, as the desert always had.
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